Jeb Bush will give his first major speech on foreign policy as a presidential candidate Tuesday, proposing what he says will be a strategy “to take out ISIS” and combat Islamic extremism.
At the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Bush will invoke the former president’s description of communism to label ISIS “the focus of evil in the modern world,” and push for increased U.S. engagement in the world.
According to excerpts of his prepared remarks released by the campaign late Monday night, Bush is set to sharpen his attacks on President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for withdrawing combat troops from Iraq, a decision that he’ll say was made out of “blind haste.”
“So eager to be the history-makers, they failed to be the peacemakers,” Bush will say. “Rushing away from danger can be every bit as unwise as rushing into danger, and the costs have been grievous.”
Bush will vow to be “unyielding” in the pursuit to stamp out the “barbarians of ISIS,” a strategy that will hinge on greater military strength.
“I assure you: the day that I become president will be the day that we turn this around, and begin rebuilding the armed forces of the United States,” he will say.
Over the course of the year, Bush has been steadfast in blaming Obama for America’s foreign policy woes, attributing the rise of ISIS and other foreign threats, like Russia and Iran, to what he calls the president’s policy of “pulling back.”
His brother, former President George W. Bush, signed the security agreement in 2008 that called for U.S. troops to leave Iraqi cities by 2009 and be out of the country entirely by 2011. However, he left it to Obama to determine the pace of the withdrawal and negotiate any residual force.
Jeb Bush has repeatedly called for a strategy to eliminate ISIS, though he’s been light on specifics. During the Republicans presidential debate in Cleveland on Thursday, Bush said the U.S. needs to use “every tool at our disposal” to wipe out the terror group, but last week at a forum in New Hampshire, he said he’s not sure that “boots on the ground” in Syria are necessary.
While that may sound contradictory to some, John Hannah, a Bush foreign policy adviser and senior counselor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said it’s complicated for candidates to strike just the right tone on foreign policy in short soundbites.
“You do want to use everything that’s necessary to protect your vital interests, but you also want to do it in as smart and cost-effective a way as possible to get the job done and ensure an enduring solution,” he said when asked about Bush’s statements.
That requires nuance, Hannah continued, and “yes” or “no” questions — such as “do you support troops on the ground?” — don’t always allow for thorough answers.
“In the minds of a lot of people, U.S. national security and foreign policy has been reduced to either ‘do nothing’ or ‘we go in alone with 200,000 troops,’ and I just think that’s not the history of American foreign policy,” Hannah said. “There are almost always more options available to secure our interests than simply that binary choice of doing nothing or doing everything.”
Speeches like the one Bush will deliver Tuesday can help candidates spell out their nuanced views on complex issues.
Bush has also said he favors sending special forces and embedding them with the Syrian Free Army, as well as the Iraqi army. Like many other GOP presidential candidates, he’s called for the U.S. to join with other Arab nations to create an alliance that goes after ISIS. That group, he says, would be aided by U.S. air and military power.
Aside from embedding troops in Syria and Iraq, Bush’s specific proposals so far don’t outline a significant departure from current operations. The U.S., for example, is already part of a coalition of allies that’s hitting ISIS with air strikes, and it has troops in Iraq training the army there.
Like other governors running for president, Bush has been studying up on foreign policy and trying to craft an approach that distances himself from his brother and father. At a foreign policy speech in Detroit this past February, when Bush was technically in the exploratory phase of running for president, he stressed that he was his “own man.”
Critics, however, were quick to point to the list of Bush’s foreign policy advisers that includes many of the same names that advised George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush.
The candidate had to play damage a few months later after he struggled for days to answer whether he would have gone into Iraq, like his brother, knowing what we know now about the faulty intelligence that in part led to the war.
Ultimately Bush said he would not have gone in — and reiterated that sentiment last week in the debate, saying it was a “mistake” to invade Iraq — but the stumble resulted in weeklong coverage and raised questions about whether Bush could truly separate himself from his brother’s legacy.
Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s top foreign policy adviser, labeled Bush’s upcoming speech “a pretty bold attempt to rewrite history and reassign responsibility.”
In a call with reporters, Sullivan tied the roots of ISIS back to the Bush administration and said the group did not grow “out of a vacuum” but rather out of al Qaeda in Iraq, which sprung up because of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq and subsequent mistakes, like disbanding the Iraqi army and banishing Sunnis who later became insurgents, he said.
